xv, 359 pages ; 27 cm

This book deals with a timely topic of enduring importance. Due to the recent terrorist attacks, academics, the lay public, the media, even the U.S. president, have revived the use of the word evil, which now appears with a noticeably increased frequency in much of the daily news and commentary. Professionals particularly in the fields of psychology, sociology, and philosophy are being asked for answers to the questions, Why is there human evil? What are its causes? How are we to understand individuals who wish to inflict human suffering and destruction on as wide a scale as possible? An intense interest in the phenomenon of human evil has developed. It is expressed in the widespread concern to understand human psychology and patterns of thought that underlie human evil in all of its forms-ranging from the aggression, brutality, and destructiveness of war, genocide, and terrorism, to individual expressions of human evil in prejudice, racism, and hate crimes. This book is the first of its kind. It is a comprehensive and solid study of the multi-causal nature of a phenomenon that has been treated almost exclusively in terms of religion, myth, symbolism, moral philosophy, and ethics. The reader will find that it makes clear, specific, non-speculative, and definite answers to the questions often now raised concerning human evil

Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-342) and index

Foreword / Eric A. Zillmer and Irving Greenberg -- Acknowledgments -- Part 1. Pathology and man. Overview of part 1 -- Chap. 1. Pathology and theories of disease -- Chap. 2. Pathology, politics, and clinical judgment -- Chap. 3. Framework-relative pathology -- Chap. 4. Epidemiology, universal pathology, and therapy -- Chap. 5. Pathology and the concept of evil -- Part 2. The psychology of human evil. Overview of part 2 -- Chap. 6. Freud and the pathology of aggression -- Chap. 7. Jung's understanding of human evil -- Chap. 8. Recent psychiatry and human evil : Menninger, Fromm, and Peck -- Chap. 9. The quantitative history of human self-destructiveness -- Chap. 10. The pathology of a species : ethology and human evil -- Chap. 11. Toward a unified psychology of genocide -- Chap. 12. The Holocaust and human evil -- Chap. 13. The psychology of terrorism and human evil -- Chap. 14. The popularity of war and its role in human evil -- Chap. 15. "We are sheep" : obedience and human evil -- Chap. 16. The phenomenology of hatred -- Chap. 17. The ecological pathology of man -- Chap. 18. Moral intelligence and the pathology of human stupidity -- Part 3. The conceptual pathology of man. Overview of part 3. -- Chap. 19. The pathology of everyday thought -- Chap. 20. Relativism, framework-relativity, and human evil -- Chap. 21. Reflections -- References -- Index -- About the author

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